neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP (Paul Neubauer) (03/17/88)
HELP!! I have some questions for anyone who has experience with different
flavors of VAXen. I am supposed to demonstrate some code I have written
here somewhere else. I have written the program to run on regular VAXen
(785's and 8650) here at Ball State U. The demo is to be at the U. of
Illinois, where all of the grown-up VAXen run unix, so I am supposed to use
a VAXstation 2 which is running VMS. (I forgot to check exactly what VMS
version they are running there, but I do have reason to believe it is 4.x,
which is all I need, (I hope)) The relevant VAXstation has an attached tape
drive and a 5-1/4" diskette drive.
I expect to be able to take precompiled executable and shareable images that
can do all of their file (or at least directory) references through
externally defined logical names. (I do not expect to be able to recompile
on the spot because I am using a wierd (and I DO mean wierd :-) language mix
-- DAL and OPS5.)
My questions: What difficulties should I expect to run into? I am assuming
(hoping) that the VAXstation can run VAX executables. (A VAX is a VAX is a
VAX, right? At least DEC tries to assure us of that.) Are there any BIG
incompatabilities in the DCL that the VAXstation uses, especially in the
treatment of logical names or directory structures? I will need to bring
my own (well, actually the university's) terminal -- a VT241 with DECtalk in
the line. Is there any known problem with hooking such a beast up to the
VAXstation? What media should be preferred for transporting the files? My
guess is that the tape should be best, but I would entertain using diskettes
if I knew anything about the format required. What well-known blunders am I
about to commit?
Please help me out if you can. Thanks very much in advance.
--
Paul Neubauer neubauer@bsu-cs.UUCP
<backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!neubauerward@cfa.harvard.EDU (Steve Ward) (03/20/88)
The only concerns with moving executables from one VMS VAX to another (excluding VMS OS hacks or I/O devices unique to one machine) are with the VMS OS versions, particularly the runtime libraries. If you are going from 4.6 to 4.6 then no problem. If you are going from 4.4 to 4.6 (these are abritrary examples) then you might have to recompile in order to have the correct linkage (sometimes just relinking is enough) into the sharable runtime libraries. If your code is truly standalone and does not use any of the sharable runtime libraries then it is less likely you will have to recompile or relink in moving code, though this possibility never quite goes away since over time VMS may change enough to force recompilation. My guess is that when VMS5.0 comes out most everything will need to be recompiled. It sounds like you are going from/to the same version of VMS on different-sized VAXes. This will be no problem. I have never seen standard VAX sharable runtime libraries for DAL and OPS5 on the standard VMS distribution, so if you have sharable (or any kind) runtime libraries you might consider taking a copy with you, just in case they don't exist locally.